Time for a harder look at this paver?

Superior Paving, Inc. in Burnt Hills won’t return calls from me, but I wonder how they would respond to the police? That’s what I asked law enforcement representatives around the Capital Region this week when I asked how this company can remain in business after admitting it has taken thousands of dollars in deposits from customers and then repeatedly failing to do the promised work.

I called Superior for comment Wednesday while preparing this report, but have yet to hear back from the company, or Matt Ward, its owner.

On Sunday I wrote about Daniel and Elissa Fromowitz of Niskayuna, and how they paid $2,475 to Superior, as a 50 percent deposit on a job to repave their driveway and also to replace a concrete sidewalk leading up to their house. They wrote the check in early August, then Superior skipped three dates in September to do the work. When Daniel Fromowitz demanded a refund, he was literally told that the check was in the mail. No check ever arrived, so he contacted me as well as the state attorney general, whose office sometimes prosecutes contractors who accept money and then neglect to do the work. The Fromowitzes were the seventh customers of Superior Paving who told me a version of the same story. Some people gave Superior $400, and others paid them $2,000 or more as deposits without seeing any work done.

I spoke Wednesday with Robert Carney, the Schenectady County district attorney, who said the Fromowitzes should also call the Niskayuna police to file a criminal complaint.

Carney, a veteran prosecutor, would not say for certain if any charges should be filed against the contractor. He did say, however, if a business takes money and then simply does not do the work, it might be a case of larceny. But it’s not so simple to prove that in court, he said.

“The law requires you to prove that the contractor had no intention of doing the work at the time the money changed hands,” Carney said. “If there is work done, even shoddy work, then it’s difficult to say that’s a criminal situation. … But if no work was done at all, to me that looks like possible larceny.”

I told Carney the Capital Region customers who have written and called me over the last five months to tell me the company took a check for hundreds or thousands of dollars and then never showed up to do the work.

Carney said he was intrigued. He promised to call the Niskayuna Police Department to follow up on Superior, and he encouraged the Fromowitzes to file a formal complaint with the police.

Meanwhile, in Superior’s home county of Saratoga, District Attorney James Murphy also promised he would contact the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department as well as State Police based in Clifton Park to see if any complaints had been filed about the company.

“You asked me if they were on my radar screen?” Murphy said. “The answer is, they are now. Yes.”

Someone from Rensselaer County District Attorney Richard McNally’s office said they would look into Ward and see if there are any pending complaints. A spokeswoman from Albany County District Attorney David Soares returned a call and requested more information about the company.

Superior continues to receive notice from the attorney general. The company recently appeared in the attorney general’s new database, at www.nyknowyourcontractor.com.

Superior’s listing cites two complaints where work was promised but didn’t get done. One of those complaints said Ward took $4,600 for work that was never done.